Opinion

ALASTAIR CAMPBELL compares the recent resignation of the Dutch cabinet with the lack of scrutiny and accountability of our own leaders. It is now almost a quarter of a century since I jumped the journalistic fence into frontline political combat. By the time another quarter of a century is done, assuming I survive that long, […]

When David Attenborough finally stops making shows, they will have to reinvent the wildlife genre entirely, says Jean-Baptiste Gouyon.  At a recent event on the history of wildlife documentaries, I was asked a question that has popped up regularly in my 15 years of research: “Who, do you think, will replace David Attenborough?”  Now that Sir […]

WILL SELF on the unwarranted sense of awe so many Britons have towards US politics. Towards the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic 1959 spy thriller, North by Northwest, the protagonist and his love interest find themselves trapped on Mouth Rushmore by the evil foreign agents. Embodying Madison Avenue advertising executive, Roger Thornhill, with his characteristically blousy […]

Social media won’t the same again without Donald Trump, says LIZ GERARD. But the issues he raised online have not gone away. We’ll miss him now he’s gone. Not from the White House, but from Twitter. Mad, bad and dangerous, maybe. But @realdonaldtrump brought us smiles as well as sighs. Who could forget “Covfefe” or […]

The US has entered the post-Trump era. But don’t expect things to get much smoother, says JAMES BALL If the last few years had been a movie, then Wednesday of this week would surely be the last, triumphant scene. Yes, the bad guys had been winning for most of the running time – and the pandemic gave us […]

The effect of time dragging through the pandemic is another indication of how we no longer see progress as inevitable or incremental, says WILL SELF. Time, eh – it just keeps on slipping, slipping, slipping into the future, as the Steve Miller Band so percipiently observed in their 1976 chart-topping ditty, Fly Like an Eagle. […]

Not all pro-Europeans think Keir Starmer got his position wrong on the Brexit deal. Desmond Fitzgerald (Letters, TNE #226), thinks that Starmer should be ashamed for whipping Labour MPs to vote for the Brexit deal, but I think Starmer was right: 1. The vote wasn’t Leave or Remain, it was between a bad deal (terms […]

Are Remainers right to move to campaign to rejoin the EU? Readers discuss. At 11pm on December 31, Twitter was again flooded with #FBPE Tweets. For some, it was a last act of defiance. For others, 2021 marks the start of a long term campaign to rejoin the bloc. To my fellow former Remain supporters, […]

Ian Dunt says this is the most severe and unforgivable example of government failure that we have seen in our lifetime. The UK Covid death toll now stands at more than 80,000 people. By the time it is over, it’ll almost certainly hit 100,000. Every afternoon, the same terrible bell tolls announcing the number of […]

BONNIE GREER reports on the US Capitol riots and what they tell us about modern populism. Was the storming of the US Capitol by the supporters of Donald Trump the beginning of the end of populism? Was this the lethal highpoint, the death knell for the crusade that went under the banner ‘Make America Great Again’? With the banning […]

This is the time when I traditionally look back on the shows I’ve reviewed over the previous 12 months and select the ones I’ve most enjoyed. I have, however, a practical problem that will no doubt soon be confronting the judges of the big theatrical awards: there isn’t an awful lot to choose from. I […]

JASON WALSH reports on Europe’s varying fortunes on vaccination roll-outs. The European Union performs many roles for its citizens. The most important – if one of the least-discussed – is to keep them safe from harm. And that is the issue causing grave concern across the continent right now, as the EU and its member states try desperately […]

Former Commons speaker JOHN BERCOW on the US president, the British politicians who indulged him, and the Trumpian tactics which have spread to the UK. The chorus of execration of the Capitol rioters, and president Trump’s evil incitement of them, has been loud, eloquent and justified. Global media outlets have simply reflected the overwhelming sense […]

Trump’s refusal to accept the end of his presidency was predicted by Mitch Benn in 2017… because he had seen it foretold in Game of Thrones.  Here’s the thing: I’m not an expert. On anything. I know a fair bit about a fair few things, but the capacity to store and retrieve biggish reserves of […]

Last week, editor-at-large Alastair Campbell kicked off a debate as to what more Remainers could have done to stop Brexit. Here, writers, politicians and campaigners have their say. Mary Honeyball Former Labour MEPWe pro-Europeans must show humility. We lost. Leave won. Many Leave voters were on low incomes, over 50 and male. They viewed the EU […]

The UK’s vaccination programme started well. But JAMES BALL detects some wearily and worryingly familiar signs of over-promising and under-delivering. No-one ever imagined the UK would end up in a third national coronavirus lockdown, let alone that thanks to systematic government failure it would end up with the NHS in an even more parlous position even […]

Don’t assume it couldn’t happen here, warns ALASTAIR CAMPBELL. There was something almost comical about the way Boris Johnson and his media sycophants sought to distance him and his cabinet from their previous ‘upsucking’ to Donald Trump. Whether Johnson backing Trump for a Nobel peace prize; Dominic Raab even quite recently refusing to criticise Trump’s […]

Leave.EU’s decision to register themselves in Co. Waterford, Ireland is very unwelcome, concerning and more importantly, requires rigorous scrutiny.  While some commentators may have allowed themselves a wry smile at the irony that an organisation set up to take the UK out of the EU have themselves decided to remain within the bloc, the irony and mild humour should not […]

The government needs the right message – and the right messenger – to ensure the UK is protected from the coronavirus. The commencement of the Oxford University/AstraZeneca vaccine roll-out is axiomatically good news. It now means Britain has two vaccines (the Pfizer-BioNTech came first) being administered to all those deemed priority groups. And there is […]

The president’s removal from the social network could create yet another cultural chasm between Democrats and Republicans. “Hello, I’m new to Twitter, what are you guys up to”, says a tweet purporting to be from someone called John Barron – whose avatar resembles Donald Trump with a photoshopped moustache. On Friday, Trump’s Twitter account was […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY profiles the sculptor and painter, starting on the evening that would change his outlook and output. The epiphany came one cold night in a fleapit newsreel theatre. Alberto Giacometti spent the Second World War in Geneva and had just returned to Paris in the winter of 1945 when he ducked into a cinema […]

I’m concerned for the future of Brixton Speaks, my only foray, ever, into public visual arts. I did work as a cartoonist for a few years in the mid-1980s, contributing to publications as august as the New Statesman and City Limits, but my quip about the metier once I began writing in earnest, was that […]

Britain will one day want to rejoin the EU, but will they have us back? Foreign policy expert NICK HOPKINSON outlines a possible route back to membership. Brexit is our biggest retreat from Europe since Dunkirk. We have distanced ourselves economically, and in many respects politically, from the EU as much as any European country can […]

CHARLIE CONNELLY reports on the quest for the remains of a writer likened to the Bard, and the posthumous activities of other great authors. Imagine if William Shakespeare’s remains were no longer in his grave inside Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. Imagine if they’d been lost, possibly in an act of desecration during a traumatic […]

TIM WALKER looks back at a memorable meeting with the great mime artist. Of all the people in all the world, mine artists must seem like the least promising subjects for an interview. Marcel Marceau was, however, a joy to talk to. And just to behold. It was the summer of 1990 and the scene […]

Britpop, I imagine most of you are old enough to remember, was a loosely applied umbrella tern referring to the movement of varyingly retro British guitar bands which rose to dominate the UK pop charts in the mid 1990s. I was in my mid 20s at the time – pretty much the same age as […]

Were the Angry Brigade a mere comedic English counterpoint to the doomed romantics of Germany’s Baader Meinhof gang or a far more sinister, if thankfully incompetent, force? Today anger is an emotion associated with right wing populism, of foaming keyboard warriors and the puce-faced men that are – for better or worse – often dubbed ‘gammons’. But […]

The UK’s departure from the EU not only introduced new phrases, but showed how language can be used to shape political debate. ANDREAS BUERKI reports. A number of expressions have entered everyday use since Brexit started. Terms like ‘Article 50’, ‘no deal’, ‘hard border’ may now seem just part of life but they were seldom, if ever, […]

One of the most alarming aspects of the pandemic is the sight of the mainstream right degenerating into attacks on public health policy. This week, as the virus spiralled completely out of control, they were still spewing out gibberish from the studios and newsrooms of respected British media outlets. “Lockdowns don’t work,” Talk Radio host Julia Hartley-Brewer […]

The UK’s pandemic plight might seem hopeless. But there are some measures which could help alter its course. One of the most frequent complaints levelled at newspaper columnists is that we snipe from the sidelines. Usually, it’s a bit of an unfair one: sniping from the sidelines is, in fact, what columnists are paid to […]

We lost… but we can’t just get over it. First we need to understand why we couldn’t stop Brexit. ALASTAIR CAMPBELL kicks off a crucial debate. On New Year’s Eve, I took a pill at 9pm, so as to be sure of being fast asleep two hours later, when the actual moment of departure from […]

The Government’s decision not to subscribe to the ERASMUS scheme for student exchange is desperately sad.  The scheme has benefited British young people since 1987. In the Guardian, Adam Tickell, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sussex,  was quoted as saying that “the Erasmus programme transformed the lives of thousands of young people”. My life was […]